The third release from Pete Trewavas’ project with Marillion crew member Eric Blackwood, Somewhere Between Here And There is a non-conceptual collection of songs they’ve had ‘kicking around’ and wanted to share with the world.
The seven new compositions are flanked by a clutch of alternative mixes and live recordings that you couldn’t quite call ‘essential’, but the new songs are worth the admission price alone. Ever Be Friends is airy, yearning soft rock echoing the Moody Blues, and the mournful, slightly agitated Growing Down In Brooklyn hits home just as surely. This isn’t the most challenging fare the duo will come out with, but judged on their own merits, alongside the emotionally fraught anthem of Stranger In A Foreign Land, these are songs that would do any Edison’s album proud. The instrumental interludes – the pastoral flutey textures of Solstice, the midnight piano lament Sinner’s Minus – are equally intoxicating, and the pick among the other morsels has to be The Mike Hunter Orchestra Mix of The Longing. Somewhere between a mini-album and an outtakes comp, this isn’t really one thing or another. But judged purely on musical terms, it works whichever way you spin it.
